ANCHORAGE, ALASKA – October 7, 2015 – Last week, the University Economic Development Association (UEDA) announced winners of its annual Awards of Excellence program during their Annual Summit in Anchorage, Alaska.
 
Leading initiatives from across North America competed in a six-month process, which included nomination, peer review, live presentations, and, ultimately, selection by attendees of the UEDA Annual Summit as category leaders. The Awards of Excellence Program recognizes UEDA members who are transforming their campuses into engines of economic prosperity through leading edge initiatives in five categories:1) Community Connected Campus; 2) Research and Analysis; 3) Leadership and Collaboration; 4) Innovation and Entrepreneurship; and 5) Talent Development.
 
“The competition is very tough,” said Gene Merrell, UEDA Awards of Excellence chair and associate vice president for economic development at the University of Idaho. “All finalists represent initiatives that are transforming their regions in an incredibly impactful way, building towards sustainable economic growth.”
 
Throughout the Awards of Excellence process, nominations are judged on the sustainability, replicability, originality, and impact of the program or initiative. Those receiving the top marks in these criteria advance through the process, culminating in recognition as the category leader by peers in attendance at the Annual Summit.

The 2015 Awards of Excellence category winners are:
 
Community Connected Campus Category

San Joaquin Valley Rural Development Center
Submitted By:    California State University – Fresno
Housed within the Office of Community and Economic Development at Fresno State (OCED), the San Joaquin Valley Rural Development Center (SJVRDC) operates within one of the country’s most economically distressed regions where the unemployment rate is consistently over 10 percent, the median household income is $46,981and 23 percent of the population lives in poverty. The SJVRDC provides a “one-stop hub” for rural residents, small businesses, municipalities, special districts and non-profits to access information, resources, services and experts in specific subject matter. Aside from connecting rural stakeholders to a regional network of on- and off-campus partners, the SJVRDC provides a variety of services aimed at building the local capacity and improving the quality of life of the rural communities it serves. Whether immersing low-income residents in digital literacy training, delivering technical assistance to small businesses, helping municipal staff understand the fundamentals of economic development, or helping non-profits pursue funding opportunities, the SJVRDC facilitates self-sufficiency for rural stakeholders in the San Joaquin Valley. In order to obtain its own level of sustainability, the SJVRDC implemented a model of social enterprise that allows it to generate a modest level of revenue while keeping its services accessible to the rural communities it serves. Service agreements have generated $321,190 of unrestricted revenue. These flexible dollars have allowed OCED to leverage an additional $322,968 in competitive State and Federal grant funding that required match contributions. Since its establishment in 2010, the SJVRDC has generated $644,158 in total income.
 
 
Innovation and Entrepreneurship Category
 
Entrepreneurs@KU
Submitted By:    University of Kansas
Part of the mission of the University of Kansas (KU) includes growing economic prosperity including building healthy communities. KU is committed to turning discoveries into jobs and companies and by serving as a draw for businesses. KU Innovation & Collaboration (KUIC) has convened the entrepreneurial drivers on campus creating a partnership with the School of Business and the regional incubator system partner (BTBC). In a process involving both internal and external stakeholders, barriers were identified that precluded new company formation based on KU research. Based on this important feedback, Entrepreneurs@KU was launched as a transparent and supportive infrastructure to assist faculty and staff in starting companies. This infrastructure includes educational opportunities to develop and improve business models (Startup School @KU and iCorp@KU), proof of concept funding to simultaneously improve upon the technology while still inside the university, generous and transparent licensing terms (Swift Startup License) and SBIR/STTR Assistance program to help monetize newly formed companies. The Entrepreneurs@KU infrastructure brings down barriers and provides a process oriented path for KU faculty, fellows and staff founders to analyze their business ideas empowering them to bring their ideas to life and build viable ventures in Kansas.
 
 
Leadership and Collaboration Category

Washington Rural Pathways to Prosperity Conference
Submitted By:    Washington State University
Washington State University’s (WSU) Rural Pathways to Prosperity (P2P) is a statewide economic development leadership conference that uses a unique approach to reach rural communities, revive the economy, and strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystem. P2P applies the WSU Distributed Conference Model (DCM), which uses technology to connect multiple sites simultaneously to create a groundswell of self-motivated rural entrepreneurship activity in communities across the state. Only in its second year, this conference has motivated communities to explore co-working spaces, entrepreneur clubs, a collaborative food hub and more, demonstrating WSU Extension’s leadership and convening power for rural economic development.
 
P2P is organized at the state level by WSU Extension Community and Economic Development faculty and staff in collaboration with federal, state and local agency partners. The conference begins with an interactive webinar featuring a national expert who delivers content relevant to all of the geographically dispersed sites. Issues and opportunities introduced by the speaker as well as those identified by regional participants are addressed through well-designed and adaptable activities. Local community and business leaders, who receive DCM training by WSU faculty, serve as facilitators at the sites, guiding participants through work sessions. Small business owners and entrepreneurs in each community also gather in a local site to participate in the webinar together, allowing them to leverage the knowledge gained and apply it to their community’s specific goals and aspirations.


Research and Analysis Category

Measuring Innovation to Induce Innovation:  The Transformative Impact of an Innovation Index
Submitted By:    University of Southern Indiana
Universities are centers of data collection and scholarly output that serve the greater good by supplying communities with purposeful information to advance their innovation ecosystem.   Sometimes tools are developed to provide structure, and it is up to the community to provide the function. The Indiana Business Research Center (IBRC) at Indiana University has developed a useful tool for economic development known as the Innovation Index. The Innovation Index was deployed to assist in a regional ecosystem initiative called the I-69 Innovation Corridor. Led by the University of Southern Indiana (USI), this application of the Innovation Index centered on 11 counties in Southwest Indiana with a focus on facilitating regional transformation. This presentation will cover the rationale for and use of the Innovation Index, the business case for applying the Innovation Index to the Southwest Indiana ecosystem, and its impact. Now in its fourth year the project has documented useful insights about the role of innovation measurement and has begun to see sustainable growth when the innovation index is applied to the ecosystem. The presentation will visually show four years of data about components of innovation in the context of an economic region and how this framework can be applied in other regions of the world.


Talent Development Category

Optical Technology Center (OpTeC)
Submitted By:    Montana State University
In 1995 MSU established a center of excellence, the Optical Technology Center (OpTeC), utilizing NSF EPSCoR seed money. Bozeman had a very fledgling high-tech community and the university’s vision was to create and collaborate with technology-based businesses by integrating faculty in several disciplines, resulting in technologies that could spin out companies and an educated workforce to populate and collaborate with the private sector.
 
The Center now boasts more than twenty faculty members and has helped establish more than thirty optics-related companies in Bozeman. Fifteen of those were started by MSU graduates, many based on technologies transferred from the university. Bozeman has about six optical companies per 10,000 population, compared with three per 10,000 in Tucson, Arizona, one of the most widely recognized centers of optics activity in the United States. OpTeC faculty members have received international, national, and regional recognition for their work in the areas of optics research and education. Companies expressed a need for a larger employee pipeline: MSU developed a new masters and undergraduate minor in laser and imaging optics. Companies said they needed technicians: MSU’s two-year Gallatin College developed an associate degree for photonics laboratory technicians. OpTeC has developed and attracted talent, it is on the cutting edge of photonics innovation, and works closely with companies, receiving contracts that help sustain the research efforts. By moving talent into positions much more lucrative than the average salaried positions in the area, it has helped transform Bozeman into a recognized optics and photonics center.
 
 
Next year’s Awards of Excellence program will see a moderate restructuring to align the program with the recently released Foundations for Strategy and Practice, which helps to define the industry of higher education economic development and creates a taxonomy of programming that institutions can use to become even more relevant in modern economic growth. Nominations for the 2016 Awards of Excellence program will begin in the spring of 2016 and are open to all competitive initiatives. Watch for more information at http://Awards.UniversityEDA.org.
 
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How the Awards Process Works
University project teams applied for the UEDA Awards of Excellence Program. Projects were reviewed and scored by an executive award committee and three or four project finalists were selected for each category. Project finalists presented their projects to attendees of the UEDA Annual Summit, where the audience of peers voted for projects that best exemplified the criteria for their category. Throughout the process, projects were judged on scalability, sustainability, impact originality, and the ability to be replicated. Awards were presented at the awards banquet at the 2015 Annual Summit held in Anchorage, AK. The 2016 UEDA Summit will be held in Roanoke, VA in the fall of 2016. http://awards.universityeda.org
 
About UEDA
Established in 1976, UEDA is North America’s membership organization that brings together public and private higher education; private sector; public agencies; and community economic development stakeholders in economic development. UEDA’s members work to expand economic opportunity and prosperity in our communities and regions by leveraging education / talent development; research and technology development; and community-building and place-making strategies. UEDA’s mission is to serve its members by advancing knowledge and practice in economic engagement by institutions of higher education.  http://www.universityeda.org